Theoretical Frontiers
GU Chaolin, CHEN Lelin, GU Jiang, GAO Zhe, SU Hefang, GUO Li
Rapid urbanization and climate change are rapidly changing earth and the earth systems. This paper explores the new tasks and new frontiers of Chinese geography from the perspective of the Anthropocene. As a crucial discipline within earth sciences, geography spans the natural and social sciences and is poised to become the most promising field in the era of Anthropocene. It is a new mission of geography to define the spatiotemporal structure of anthroposphere, rebuild the framework of the human-environment relationships, conduct research on topology of the human geography, return to research on sustainable development based on the unified geography. Human geography, as the most important branch of geography, will be reshaped for rapid world urbanization, climate change and sustainable issues. For historical geography, it needs to pay greater attention to the impact of human activities, such as the history of prehistoric marine civilization and continental civilization, as well as the history of the modern environmental pollution. For economic geography, it could be on finance-trade-globalization, global value chains-global production chains-global industrial chains, of course the "global South"will be becoming a hot spot and of focus. Due to the collectivization of western countries centered on the United States, the trend of deglobalization and the increasing risk of the new cold war, political geography is in urgent development need. It could be shifting from geopolitics to global governance, rebuilt an effective global institution for cooperation that belong fields of unconventional and new energy technologies. For social geography, it would prioritize social issues on the global perspective, especially as rapid world urbanization and global climate change have inequalities of race, gender, class and some other social groups. Information technology and the Internet have given Cultural Geography new connotations and new opportunities for development. It is necessary to pay special attention to the significance of human beings' use of various words and semiotics tools to the planet and its place where human being live, and explore more effective countermeasures to intervene in rapid earth change. In response to the accelerated processes of urbanization, climate and earth changes, Urban Geography should swiftly transition from a traditional framework focused on "urbanization-urban systems-internal urban structures" to a new framework focusing on modernization based on green growth. It is very likely that Anthropocene geography will give geographers some new disciplines to develop imaginary fields, such as deep sea and deep space exploration, planetary geography, interstellar colonization and migration.